Superluminal - 2/14 - I have a short attention span, but I'm a fast learner

Womanspace and Buying Stolen Goods

By Jeremy | Published: November 19, 2011

So here I was, slowly waking up, still very much in the zombified state I’m usually in for the 3 hours or so post-sleep, running through my usual bloggy news sources, when I came across this nice article on io9 regarding a ridiculously sexist story called Womanspace, published in Nature, of all places. So I read the story, and then I read it to my girlfriend, and we both laughed at the fact that, if it wasn’t for references to current technology, we would have guessed that it was a story from 1952 or so. But it isn’t. Nope, it’s a story about a couple of men who figure out that women do half their shopping in a parallel universe, and it was published (and presumably written) in 2011. Like io9, I’m not going to bother getting ripping into the awful gender stereotyping, because a ton of other sources have already done that better than I could, but io9 did bring up another valid criticism of the work, namely it’s pathetic excuse for a scientific process.

I would like to add another log of criticism to the fire, but first let’s run trough the ways this story is stupid (as an English literature student, none of my instructors would appreciate describing a work as “stupid” but this is my blog and I break academic boundaries, yo.)

Men are brave scientists uncovering the world, women tell them to buy underpants. Understood. Not only that, but there is a biological divide between men and women so huge that women are able to access a parallel universe. This counts for all women, and all men Unless you’re still one of those aging men pathetically living in the past, or a heavily indoctrinated woman, or somehow transgender but still fixated on heteronormativity because you’re oblivious to the real world, it sounds pretty stupid.
Science is when a couple of biologists (?) come up with a very non-biology related theory of parallel universes while shopping for panties, blog about it a bit, and then let the real scientists work it out. But we’re still the ones who found it. Okay, I guess. The real scientists are just the computers who work it all out for you? It’s the idea that matters, not the enormous amount of work required to find real data (not @replies), test it a billion times over, and reconcile it with our current understanding of the universe? Alrighty then.
It’s poorly written. Look, okay, I’m not gonna go into it because I still am in that zombified state, and I understand that very short fiction has its limitations, and I still suck at writing myself (I’m about 10,000 words behind on my NaNoWriMo adventure to boot), but how the hell did this story get published. Seriously.

Here’s number 4, which I completely made up on my own. What do the women do with the objects they take back from this fluffy, pink, unicorn-and-roses-filled parallel universe. They pay for them. In our universe. Now, I’m not particularly anti-capitalist. I think it has it’s problems and gets abused, but I also hate hippies, so I’m somewhere in the middle. But how indoctrinated by the almighty [insert favorite currency here] do you have to be to write a story, a science-fiction story, where people are able to get an apparently unlimited supply of items whenever they please and somehow still always pay for it in our world? No mention of the economic imbalance such a thing would cause, women not paying for it (because their just Gatherers, right?), or any real effect whatsoever. Sure, the author tries to brush it off by saying that women may not be conscious of their “evolutionary advantage,” but then also comes up with the ridiculous notion that the barcode scanners in our world would recognize the items because quantum-herp-derp-deepak-chopra. Even so, this ability is only used while shopping. That’s what “gathering” has become in this world. Not just finding things, but shopping, paying, exchanging things.

To me (and, I’m willing to bet, to many others) science fiction is about the effects of change on the world. What would happen if we found a planet which was alive, and could mess with the human psyche? What would happen if it turned out that your entire world was fictional, and that the newspaper game you were always winning was just a way for the government to use you to find enemy targets to bomb? This is why something like Star Wars can barely be considered science-fiction. It doesn’t ask questions. This author too, doesn’t ask questions. What would happen if women had the ability to hop over to a parallel world? Holy crap, that’s incredible, what would they do? Oh, they’d go and buy shoes and cleaning products, things a man wouldn’t have a use for anyway? They’d buy them? Even though the parallel owner would never get the money anyway, unless somehow cashiers have the ability to return money back to the universe it belongs in? Status quo is good, says Ed Rybicki, don’t ever change anything, because I’m too old to cope with it.

Oh wait, there’s one thing that does change. Women are now finding better looking replacement men from the alt-verse. Because that’s all women ever want, right? Better looking men? Does it ever end with this guy? He’s old and wrinkly now, he may think he’s satirizing himself and other old, wrinkly, self-loathing men, so his defense will probably be something along the lines of “look, the men are incompetent in this story, and the women are capable of great things!” Yep. Great things. Like going shopping. Good job, Ed.

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Jeremy does NaNoWriMo 2011

By Jeremy | Published: October 26, 2011

It’s that time of the year again. The leaves are falling, the days are growing shorter, going outside requires multiple layers of clothes, and tons and tons of nerds are going to try and fail National Novel Writing Month.

I am one of those nerds.

Whether or not I’ll fail remains to be seen (spoiler alert: I will) but it doesn’t hurt to try, right? The goal is to have a 50,000 words novel done by the end of November. Luckily for me the quality of the work doesn’t matter, but that wasn’t enough to motivate me last year: 2345 words. And it took me a week. So I’m trying something different this year. I’m gonna try to motivate myself by placing all of my writing on a blog, have it be open to critique, and so I can cry when I see that over the course of that month 3 people have visited it. Still, I feel it’ll get me motivated, and maybe something semi-good will come out of it. Can’t be worse than Twilight, right? And that shit sold bajillions.

I’m not going to spam this blog with (hopefully) daily posts, as I have other plans for this site, so instead I have made a little Tumblr, named it after the name of the novel, and prepared myself for incredible digital shame.

You can check it out, and learn more about the currently non-existent novel, here.

Hopefully I can balance this with school, work, and girlfriend, because winning NaNoWriMo would make me feel pretty good.

Oh yeah, if you follow me on Twitter or are one of my few Facebook friends, you will get spammed daily (maybe) by my updates. Deal with it.

On friendships, social lives, and the lack thereof

By Jeremy | Published: August 31, 2011

Hey look, Jeremy’s writing again! I would tell you how seriously you should take the following text but that would spoil all the fun!

Bloody well right

I am a man of few friends. My Facebook friend count, the ultimate indicator of True Popularity in this increasingly retarded world, has hovered comfortably around the mid-70s for years now. Of these 70-ish people, I have daily face to face interactions with exactly 1, weekly to monthly face to face interactions with exactly 2 more, see about 5 others a few times a year, and I’m lucky if I see 3 others once every half decade. Beyond those persons, it would be difficult for me to find more than a handful of the remaining 60 who I actually like and are deserving of existence. Basically, I use my Facebook to spam imgur.com links and show off my superior grades. Clearly, then, I may just have less social interaction than Joran van der Sloot, and he probably meets at least 3 Peruvian prisoners face to crotch every day.

The question is why. Why does this intelligent, hilarious, huge-donged dude not have many friends? The long answer is, well, long, complicated, and not always comfortable to accept, and will be elaborated on right after this next punchline. The short answer is that none of you are worthy.

Take the long way home

Let’s list potential reasons for social isolation, shall we?

I am diseased. A common explanation for social awkwardness is some light form of autism like Asperger’s. Clearly I don’t have Asperger’s, or I would be bragging about my “alternative condition” and I certainly wouldn’t call autism a disease. Also, I’m socially awesome, not awkward, just ask all those hordes of people who are my frie- Uhh, just ask anyone but all those morons who don’t like me because I tell them they worship false gods and smell bad.
I smell bad. Factually incorrect, just ask my loving girlfriend who I’ve been with for six years and who TOTALLY DOES EXIST MOM.
I don’t know how to make friends. False. I’ve had friends, I’ve had friends, sometimes even multiple ones at the same time, ok? Don’t tell me I don’t know how to make friends!
I don’t know how to keep friends. Ok, uhh, you might be on to something there, but you’re getting ahead of yourself, alright?
There is a global conspiracy to keep me friendless. Come on now, don’t be silly. If there was a conspiracy I would surely know about it because the conspirators are less intelligent than I am. I’ve played Deus Ex, alright, I know all about conspiracies.
A combination of random chance and attitude. Ooh, I like this one. Let’s delve deeper!

Give a little bit

If I’m gonna be rational for a minute, and I promise you it will only be a minute, then I could tell you that, just like most other things in life, things are more complicated than they seem, and a combination of both historical factors and good old fashioned personal responsibility contributed to my current situation. I moved around a lot as a kid and therefore had trouble latching on the social group, language and cultural factors interfered (those MOTHERFUCKERS) and by the time I returned to the place I had so long considered “home” I was too old to whore out for another social group. Oh yeah, that’s the thing, I don’t whore out. I’ve seen too many people (who won’t be named because I don’t remember their names) whore out for a social life. They hang out with people they would otherwise abhor simply because they are afraid to be alone. That ain’t my thing, so rapidly finding new social groups wasn’t and isn’t really and option for me. Strangely, my older brother, who “suffered” through the same historical forces as myself, has always found it easy to be socially accepted. Did I just call my brother a whore? Maybe, I’ll leave that up to you. He’s too far away to hit me anyway.

More stuff: I’m a homebody. Always have been, always will be. While all the cool people were out partying I was home playing on my Nintendo-powered Entertainment Systems, and I loved every minute of it. Sure, dorks who stay at home and play videogames don’t get a lot of chances to make friends, but they do eventually learn how to make their own blogs and can write blog posts overtly insulting everyone they’ve ever met. A whole half-dozen people will read those insults. So take that!

So there, my life has been a troubled one. Historical forces + my addiction to GoldenEye 64/Perfect Dark/Counter-Strike/Team Fortress 2 means that I no longer require belonging to a social group to function. Pity me. Pity me, because that makes you weaker than me, and then I can get the upper hand in case we are stuck in a post-apocalypse scenario and I need to take leadership of our rag tag group of survivors because that way I probably won’t die maybe perhaps.

Oh, and there’s another thing. I have this thing I do… I cut toxic relationships out of my life like a tumor with a 1.21 Jigawatt laser. This is another one of my superpowers. I know I’m one of the few people with this power, because I keep seeing people get stuck, not being able to shake off someone that is obviously of no benefit to them. They stay in friendships, romantic relationships or in contact with family members not because they love or care for the other person, not because having that person in their lives is of any benefit to them, but because they’re used to that situation and are too pussified to change it. Here’s my advice to you: Is there no benefit to your relationship with someone? Ignore it, and let it fester like a forgotten house cat trapped in the shed. Is the relationship old and does it have too much momentum to just expect the other person to understand that they need to step the fuck off? Hack that shit off with an atomic chainsaw. When you burn your bridges, you have to burn them to the motherfucking ground. That way, when you’re drunk, or tired, or lonely, or sick, or in a particularly stupid mood, there’s no way back. Delete all records, leave no stone unburned, and for the love of all that is holy and precious, do not, I repeat, DO NOT accept any friend requests from that person on any social network under any circumstances. Just turn your back. Your future self will appreciate it, while the inferior alternate universe version of you who did not heed my advice will suffer.

The logical song

Here’s the thing, right… society… in other words, all those assholes who keep telling you what to do because it’s what they do, and who will throw you in a prison cell just because you hacked every appendage off that annoying loud neighbour of yours and fed his remains to the local seagulls… society is bullshit man. Especially when society’s opinion conflicts with my own. Because here I am, in 2011, with a very small, very strangely constructed social circle, and I’m happy. Because fuck you guys, you don’t know what’s good for me. You hardly know what’s good for yourselves! My delusion is much better, shinier, and sexier than your delusion, and I have no regrets whatsoever.

Though I do kind of miss that blonde chick whose life I saved back in high school…

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